LSU Landscape Architecture students help rebuild South Louisiana
When Hurricanes Katrina and Rita ripped into Louisiana's coastline last year, leaving the state’s residents, businesses, and infrastructure in shambles, LSU students, faculty, and staff were quick to respond to the disaster. Today, they are involved in Louisiana's recovery more than ever.
Since the hurricane, faculty have received thousands of dollars in grants from the National Science Foundation to conduct research in the storms’ aftermath. Meanwhile, inside the classroom, student learning has been enriched through hands-on opportunities to solve problems faced during and after the storm.
Rebuilding New Orleans
After Katrina, professors Bruce Sharky and Kevin Risk’s Landscape Architecture 5001 class undertook a project to explore a range of alternatives for rebuilding New Orleans with the goal of bringing back dislocated residents to more livable, safer, and attractive neighborhoods.
The class, supported by the Louisiana Sea Grant College program, was composed of 25 landscape architecture seniors who traveled to the affected areas to survey the sites. They decided on what part of the city they wanted to focus their projects. Some looked at Lakeview, the 9th Ward, Mid-City, Gentilly, or the Industrial Canal, while others took a regional attack to rebuilding.
Chad Ogea, a senior in landscape architecture, saw the recreation of lost coastal wetlands as vital to rebuilding New Orleans – a city that rests below sea level.
"What happens to our wetlands is going to determine what New Orleans is going to look like in the future," Ogea said.
Ogea proposes a plan to reclaim and protect New Orleans and its surrounding areas by combining natural and structural systems to build land and provide protection from flooding and storm surge.
He also advocates the creation of freshwater diversion projects near the Breton Sound and the Barataria-Terrebonne basins. These diversion projects ¬– along with the existing Caernarvon project – work by allowing a controlled release of freshwater from the Mississippi River, which deposits rich sediments integral to building new land.
Furthermore, Ogea feels it is imperative to fill the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet – a channel east of New Orleans in St. Bernard Parish that allows ships a shorter route between the river and Gulf of Mexico. For years the MRGO has been little used. It does, however, serve as a conduit for destructive saltwater into freshwater wetlands.
With the filling of the MRGO, Ogea said the Industrial Canal would need to be deepened and its entrance at the Mississippi River widened. Locks at each end of the canal would provide protection from storm surge.
"New Orleans has a chance to redo it, and redo it right this time. Two hundred years ago we went with a structural approach of building levees, now we need to consider reintroducing natural systems back into the landscape," Ogea said.
Ogea points out that this approach could not only work for New Orleans, but for any city in southeast Louisiana.
Students who concentrated on the Lakeview area, realize the importance of returning homeowners quickly and safely back to the historic 1950s-settled neighborhoods, but advocate rebuilding homes on elevated ground or on piers. Their plans include incorporating more green space and water retention and detention areas to manage future floodwaters.
Two students, Daniel Boutte and Dan Spiller, focused their work around the Industrial Canal. One unique aspect of their presentation included alternative types of housing that could be considered. They proposed recycling abandoned cargo containers, retrofitting them to create inexpensive, high-density apartments or modular homes.
This spring, six students from the class plan to work in southwest Louisiana with Lake Charles Mayor Randy Roach’s office to help solve some of the city’s severe housing shortage problems. The students will be looking at alternative sites for building temporary or permanent affordable housing in the area. Two other students from the class plan to assist rebuilding and relocation efforts in the community of Cameron, Louisiana.
Vertical Evacuation
After seeing images of hundreds of people stuck in attics or stranded on rooftops by the rising floodwaters, some mechanical engineering students took to the drawing boards to come up with solutions for better equipping individuals – especially the elderly – for vertical evacuations in the future.
As part of Assistant Professor Michael Murphy’s mechanical engineering design class, sophomores Lance Brumfield, Doug McCurry, James Powell, Adam Romaguera, and Travis Rushing designed an emergency evacuation kit to assist escapes from the attic to the roof and provide protection, sustenance, and the ability to signal for rescue once on the roof.
Realizing that not everyone, especially the weak, can wield an ax to puncture a hole in a roof, the group examined alternative tools for escaping the floodwaters.
The solution was an attic-mounted, screw jack for punching through or lifting the plywood roof.
Romaguea explained that the team chose the device for its lasting qualities and ease of use.
“The team felt like whatever was mounted in the attic needed to be in place for 30-50 years and still be in good working condition,” said Romaguera. “Also we chose it because the jack is easy to work since it distributes force on the jack, allowing even the weak to perform the task.”
Other items the team included in the utility-pack housed kit were: a step ladder to aid escape to the roof; orange tarp and poles to offer shelter and shade from the elements, as well as, act as a signal tool for rescue; flashlight radio combination; hatchet hammer; solar blankets; high-frequency whistle; nails; chalk; glow stick; nylon rope; food bag; and a list of necessary food and drink items to be purchased five days prior to the storm.
Contact Michelle Spielman | LSU
Office of Public Affairs
Spring 2006
Sophomores
Adam Romaguera, Travis Rushing, Lance Brumfield, Doug McCurry, and James
Powell (not pictured) designed an emergency evacuation kit to assist escapees
from the attic to the roof. They created the emergency kit for their mechanical
engineering design class. 